...I'm full of 'em. I've created so many mini-firewalls of identity on the Net that I wonder if I can keep up with them all. But Pagnostolic is a long-standing tried-and-true pseudonym. (Or did I just create an oxymoron? Can a pseudonym be true?)
Ram Dass once wrote that everyone should come up with a term to match their own individual expression of spirituality and belief. For example, I've met a lot of Jew-Bu folks: Judaism and Buddhism might seem at cross purposes (pardon the pun), but to me it makes perfect sense to blend the spiritual elements of detached loving-kindness with the vital emotional force of "L'Haim"!
As for myself: I was raised Catholic, and was one holy little tyke -- running off to daily Mass three blocks from home in the darkness of winter, becoming immersed in books about the lives of the saints and martyrs, falling in love with the old Latin mass and the Stabat Mater chants and the Stations of the Cross.... While I abhor the current conservatism of those Catholics who still revere the old traditional rituals while bending them to intolerant ends, I nevertheless understand the romance of incense and deep mysteries, the mythos of Mary (both the Mother and the Magdalene), and the passion of giving one's all for one's belief. And for that, I'm grateful to the religion of my upbringing. Hey, I even just remembered that today is the feast day of St. Joseph: that poor long-suffering dude who can't officially lay claim to any genetic bond with Yeshua, but who managed to be a good carpenter-father-figure. One of those quiet guys in the background who sets up the premise and then lets everyone else run with it.
After a brief spate of charismatic born-again fever in my teens, I pulled up hard against the "one-way" attitudes that shocked me into outgrowing my Christian roots. And in beginning the search for alternative expressions, I found Huston's primer The Religions of Man. Reading was good, but experience was better: when I discovered the rebirth of pagan spirituality, I was off and running with local groups who followed Starhawk and the Celtic year of seasonal celebration. And in finding Margo Adler's Drawing Down the Moon I also found those who appreciated the wonderfully messy, profuse, and profound cosmologies of ancient Egypt. The concept of a stable society over three millennia which could draw from the Nile a spirituality encompassing more than 2000 "neters" (powers, deities) as well as their ability to command their gods rather than propitiate them.... well, let's just say that I stand in awe of their methods and their divine madness. Such polytheism is in keeping with Jung's understanding that we cannot begin to comprehend the Totality, but we can easily enough find divinity in multiplicity. And when all is said and done, I like the down-home aspect of finding my religion close to the earth, of immanence as well as transcendence.
Still, in the overall scheme of things, I'm really more comfortable with the questions than needing to have answers. In the truer sense of the word, I just flat-out don't know. Nor do I need to. The love of mystery is far more compelling than the search for an ultimate Truth. Better simply to know what I know, accept what I don't know, and keep on pondering.
Thus, I welcome you to whatever I wind up writing here as my pagnostolic self. And I also welcome your feedback via e-mail. While I understand from an existential standpoint that we are all alone, there is still the serendipity of connections, shared epiphanies, and the openness to wonder that makes it all so very worthwhile.
God only knows when I'll write again. I'm a crow, picking up on shiny objects, and this is today's bauble. I have more fun on couchsurfing.com (where I have, yes, another alternative name) because lots of interactions happen there. This business of writing just to be writing, with no particular reader in mind, is unnerving. The apostle Paul may drive me nuts with some of his goofy thinking, but I sure do understand his epistolary style. May you, dear reader, be somehow enriched by this one-way correspondence -- provided I have the kishkas to stay with it...
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